Pretty much eveyone here is aware of the relative importance to the BNSF and UPRR of the Posts in Southern California. Also, we are aware of the rsh to completion of the major projects by the Norfolk Souther and CSX to improve their routes to and from the East Coast Ports for double stack container traffic.
This by no means denegrates the CPRR and CNR and their efforts to create a profitable path on their lines for their upper West Coast port trafic in containers.
The Panama Canal is approximately half way through their scheduled improvements that will pass much larger container ships through their gateway routes to East Coast American and Eoropean ports.
Not really sure of how the Eastern Container traffic moves through Canadian Ports, and apparently, there are also anticipations that India is moving up as an origin for manufacturing of products consumed in North America, and Europe, which uses the SUEZ Canal.
I think the reporter hit the situation from just the right angle. There will be changes, and the changes will be driven by the marketplace. For a container going to Chicago, the trip from East Asia through the Panama Canal to a Gulf Coast port would add quite a bit of time to the journey. That has to be factored into the total cost of getting widgets from Pusan to Peoria. For some items, the time factor might well outweigh the lower direct transportation cost. Those things will continue to leave Long Beach by rail.
There is also the little detail that total demand will continue to increase with the population. It isn’t hard to believe that increased demand for imported products will increase enough to fully employ the greater capacity for handling them.
Anyone who tries to predict what will happen five years down the road in anything but the broadest spectrum of possibilities is probably playing with several cards less than a full deck. There are always new X-factors being added to the equation.
My own prediction is that the Canal will be capacity restrained, that initially there will be more ships than its capacity can handle. Prices will then be raised and rail will become more competitive. The total demand will require all modes to be used. Including the KCS’s railroad paralleling the canal.
Do a “Search our Community” here in the box to the right margin for “Panama”, and you should come up with several threads discussing this topic in the past year or two. As I recall several posts by Railway Man were pretty well-informed, replete with facts/ statistics, and incisive on the point, particularly on the traffic flows and factors that will change them. I believe that not all is as it wold first appear, and that perhaps not a lot has changed with regard to the ‘driving factors’, other than the passage of time in the interim.
This topic was mentioned in a recent TRAINS article and I was surprised to read that the only East Coast ports that were capable of fitting the hew larger Panamax size ships were Norfolk, VA and Baltimore, MD. The issues are draft and overhead clearance. The height number must be misprinted because it seems too small. The article says New York/New Jersey is out of the running because of the number of bridges. That harbour did have the necessary draft clearance. As was already mentioned, the issue of time vs. cost means that shippers will want to use new larger size ships as soon as possible.
I found the article somewhat annoying, as it didn’t mention Canadian ports. As it stands right, now the busiest East Coast port in Canada is Halifax, NS. I’m not sure if or how many containers from overseas arrive at Montreal, QC. They must have a container port there, but my mind is drawing a blank right now. I hope one of those ports will fit the new Panamax size ships, or I fear the Canadian taxpayers are going to have to pay to “Make it so”, to quote Captain Picard.[:(][banghead][tdn]
Why should the ships take the time to sail past Norfolk for several more hours to reach Baltimore ? What new different market do they reach from there ?
I believe one of the Georgia ports - either Savannah or Charleston - will also be able to handle the Panamax ships in the near future.
I agree about the liklihood of the misprinted number . . .
Halifax has been consistently under-rated and under-served by rail. Both John G. Kneiling - who consulted on it - and William D. Middleton wrote articles on it in Trains in the late 1960’s/ early 1970’s. I spent some time there in 1997, and I believe that the draft there is ample, and that both bridges across the harbor are plenty high enough. It is also ice-free in winter, and has much more direct access from the open Atlantic Ocean than most other ports - and is much closer to Europe than any other East Coast Port.
Savannah GA can handle 48’ draft ships, I think I read somewhere. The new, 50’ draft ships that will use the canal will not be a problem because the will not likely to be fully loaded by the time they hit the port.
I checked the port of Saint John (I see now where we are being told that is the correct way to write it) website, and their container port only has a 40 foot draft capability. Plus it seems rather constrained for space onshore. I suppose that could be fixed with the right amount of money. I don’t know about the undersea conditions, so the draft problem may or may not be feasible to fix.
One aspect of this debate that seems to be overlooked is the fact that over half of the goods coming into the LA/LB port area are destined for delivery in Southern California and, thus, are delivered by trucks: they never see rails… The SoCal area has a huge population and the demand for goods it generates will guarantee that many ships will dock in LA/LB in the future. And, if the ships are going there anyway, it is hard to see the advantages of sending freight to the midwest by train being ignored.
Somehow I don’t think that Halifax will be much of a factor for larger Panamax ships coming from the Panama Canal to the East Coast. It would be the long way around to most of Canada compared to most U.S. ports.
[(-D] Oh, jeez - that’s OK, it’s deserved - fingers in motion quickly and mind onto other things. As Mark Twain said about being tarred and feathered and ridden out of town on a rail: “If it wasn’t for the honor of the thing, I’d rather walk.”
I should have caught that, too, because I was in Charleston for a long weekend a few years ago. An old, narrow, high, and curved highway bridge as the northern approach for US 17 has since been replaced with a newer and higher one. The old one was a pretty good stand-in for an amusement park thrill ride for certain people . . . [:-^] And I understand the sentiments about the long-time citizens of Charleston - Hurricane Hugo in the mid-1980’s not only damaged a lot of their town, but the insurance settlement payments enabled a lot of it to be renovated, which might not have occurred otherwise . . . [:-^]
I’ve not yet been to Savannah, so I can’t speak to that. But I’ve also been to Brunswick, and although I didn’t recall any overhead bridges between the sea and the docks, I see from the aerial photos and maps that again US 17/ GA 25 do have a bridge across the harbor area.